Analyzing sentiment in product reviews

ABSTRACT

A processor uses natural language processing to ingest product reviews for a plurality of products. Each of the products embodies a specific form for each of the plurality of product features. The processor analyzes the ingested product reviews for sentiments associated with the specific forms. The processor generates a sentiment score for each product feature based on the analysis. The processor ranks the plurality of product features based on the sentiment scores.

BACKGROUND

The present disclosure relates generally to the field of naturallanguage processing, and, more particularly, to using natural languageprocessing in analyzing sentiment in product reviews.

As a field of computer science, natural language processing tends tofocus on the interactions between computer systems and human languages.Many modern natural language processing algorithms are derived based onmachine learning and rely heavily on statistical inferences. Byanalyzing a large set of real-world examples of natural language usage,a computer system may be able to glean sets of rules that guide themachine through future analysis of natural language passages.

SUMMARY

Embodiments of the present disclosure include a method for evaluatingproduct features, as well as a computer program product and a system forimplementing the method. As part of the method, a processor uses naturallanguage processing to ingest product reviews for a plurality ofproducts. Each of the products embodies a specific form for each of theplurality of product features. The processor analyzes the ingestedproduct reviews for sentiments associated with the specific forms. Theprocessor generates a sentiment score for each product feature based onthe analysis. The processor ranks the plurality of product featuresbased on the sentiment scores.

The above summary is not intended to describe each illustratedembodiment or every implementation of the present disclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The drawings included in the present disclosure are incorporated into,and form part of, the specification. They illustrate embodiments of thepresent disclosure and, along with the description, serve to explain theprinciples of the disclosure. The drawings are only illustrative oftypical embodiments and do not limit the disclosure.

FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram of an example computing environmentin which illustrative embodiments of the present disclosure may beimplemented.

FIG. 2 illustrates a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture,including a natural language processing system, configured to useproduct reviews to rank product features, in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure.

FIG. 3 illustrates a flowchart of an example method for evaluatingproduct features, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

FIG. 4 illustrates a diagram including two example web pages containingproduct reviews that may be utilized in methods described herein, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 illustrates a diagram including an example auction web pageutilizing product feature rankings to aid consumer purchasing decisions,in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure.

While the embodiments described herein are amenable to variousmodifications and alternative forms, specifics thereof have been shownby way of example in the drawings and will be described in detail. Itshould be understood, however, that the particular embodiments describedare not to be taken in a limiting sense. On the contrary, the intentionis to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives fallingwithin the spirit and scope of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to the field ofnatural language processing, and in particular to using natural languageprocessing in analyzing sentiment in product reviews. While the presentdisclosure is not necessarily limited to such applications, variousaspects of the disclosure may be appreciated through a discussion ofvarious examples using this context.

As used herein, a product may refer to an item offered to a market tosatisfy consumer demand. In some embodiments, products may include,without limitation, physical items or services. For example, a productmay include a motor vehicles for sale or a hotel room for rent.

As used herein, a product review may refer to commentary on a productdesigned to aid consumers in purchasing decisions relating to theproduct. A product review may be made by consumers, including previouspurchasers of the product, who may or may not be experts in thetechnology field of the product.

As used herein, a product feature may refer to a type or group ofaspects, qualities, or attributes of a product or class/type ofproducts. For example, a motor vehicle may have product features thatinclude engine size, warranty, and cabin space. For a warrantygenerally, more specific product features may include warranty length orwarranty deductible. For another example, a hotel room may have productfeatures that include room rate, room size, and room cleanliness.Furthermore in some embodiments, different products may be considered ofthe same product type if they have the same or substantially similarproduct features (which may still have different specific forms).

As used herein, a specific form for a product feature may refer to aspecific embodiment of the product feature that is included in theparticular product of interest. For example, a specific motor vehiclemodel could have a specific form of a two-year warranty for the productfeature of warranty length. For another example, a first particularhotel room could have a specific form of fifty square meters for theproduct feature room size, while a second particular hotel room couldhave a specific form of seventy-five square meters for that same productfeature (room size).

As used herein, sentiment may refer generally to attitudes, emotions,and opinions about a particular topic (e.g., a consumer's opinions on aspecific form of a particular feature of a product). As contrasted withfacts, sentiments tend to be subjective based on the impression of thereviewer (e.g., the consumer writing the product review). In someembodiments, many different categorizations of sentiments may bepossible (e.g., a consumer is happy about a specific form of one productfeature, angry about a specific form of another product feature, and sadabout a specific form of a third product feature). In other embodiments,a binary opposition in sentiments is assumed (e.g., a consumer eitherlikes or dislikes, is for or against, a particular specific form of aproduct feature) and a sentiment is either positive, negative, orneutral on a spectrum. This may sometimes be referred to as the polarityof the sentiment.

Furthermore, as used herein, the relative extremity of the sentiment (orthe relative extremity of the sentiment's polarity) may refer to thestrength of a particular sentiment without regard for whether thesentiment is positive or negative. For example, a strongly positivesentiment and a strongly negative sentiment may have the same relativeextremity of sentiment, even though they are on opposite ends of thesentiment spectrum. For another example, a medially positive sentimentand a weakly positive sentiment may different relative extremity ofsentiment, even though they are on the same end of the sentimentspectrum.

In some situations, it may be common for websites to include productreviews for products that are sold on the website. These reviews canoften be of substantial length and there may be dozens, hundreds, oreven thousands of reviews for each product. Prospective productpurchasers may read these reviews and thereby learn information abouteach product's features, including each product's strengths andweaknesses.

Even after reading product reviews, however, it still may be difficultfor prospective purchasers to discern which aspects of a product aresignificant. This may be especially true for an inexperienced purchaserwho may not know how much certain product features actually matter. Forexample, a first-time lawn mower buyer may see a couple of reviews thatrave about the turn radius of a particular mower. While this may seemlike a major positive, the buyer may not know for sure. Specifically,the buyer may not know whether turn radius is even an important featurein lawn mowers (e.g., whether the difference between a good turn radiusand a bad turn radius is ever going to actually matter in day-to-day useof the mower).

In some embodiments of the present disclosure, an emphasis may be put onthe concept of using sentiment found in product reviews in order toinform prospective purchasers which features are important to considerwhen buying a particular product or type of product. In determining therelative importance of a feature based on product reviews, factors toconsider may include the number/proportion of reviews that mention thatfeature, whether a sentiment is associated with the feature in thereviews where it is mentioned, and the strength of the expressedsentiment. In evaluating sentiment strength, it may not matter, in someembodiments, whether a sentiment is strongly positive or stronglynegative, rather the point may be that stronger sentiment is a sign ofmore importance for the corresponding product feature. For example, aproduct review for a screwdriver that states “this screwdriver is verystrong” or “this screwdriver bent way too easily” may be equivalent forsome purposes, because both reviews may convey the importance ofconsidering tensile strength when buying a screwdriver.

As discussed above, aspects of the disclosure may relate to naturallanguage processing. Accordingly, an understanding of the embodiments ofthe present disclosure may be aided by describing embodiments of naturallanguage processing systems and the environments in which these systemsmay operate. Turning now to the figures, FIG. 1 illustrates a blockdiagram of an example computing environment 100 in which illustrativeembodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented. In someembodiments, the computing environment 100 may include a remote device102 and a host device 112.

Consistent with various embodiments, the remote device 102 and the hostdevice 112 may be computer systems. The remote device 102 and the hostdevice 112 may include one or more processors 106 and 116 and one ormore memories 108 and 118, respectively. The remote device 102 and thehost device 112 may be configured to communicate with each other throughan internal or external network interface 104 and 114. The networkinterfaces 104 and 114 may be, for example, modems or network interfacecards. The remote device 102 and/or the host device 112 may be equippedwith a display or monitor. Additionally, the remote device 102 and/orthe host device 112 may include optional input devices (e.g., akeyboard, mouse, scanner, or other input device), and/or anycommercially available or custom software (e.g., browser software,communications software, server software, natural language processingsoftware, search engine and/or web crawling software, filter modules forfiltering content based upon predefined parameters, etc.). In someembodiments, the remote device 102 and/or the host device 112 may beservers, desktops, laptops, or hand-held devices.

The remote device 102 and the host device 112 may be distant from eachother and communicate over a network 150. In some embodiments, the hostdevice 112 may be a central hub from which remote device 102 canestablish a communication connection, such as in a client-servernetworking model. Alternatively, the host device 112 and remote device102 may be configured in any other suitable networking relationship(e.g., in a peer-to-peer configuration or using any other networktopology).

In some embodiments, the network 150 can be implemented using any numberof any suitable communications media. For example, the network 150 maybe a wide area network (WAN), a local area network (LAN), an internet,or an intranet. In certain embodiments, the remote device 102 and thehost device 112 may be local to each other and communicate via anyappropriate local communication medium. For example, the remote device102 and the host device 112 may communicate using a local area network(LAN), one or more hardwire connections, a wireless link or router, oran intranet. In some embodiments, the remote device 102 and the hostdevice 112 may be communicatively coupled using a combination of one ormore networks and/or one or more local connections. For example, thefirst remote device 102 may be hardwired to the host device 112 (e.g.,connected with an Ethernet cable) while a second remote device (notshown) may communicate with the host device using the network 150 (e.g.,over the Internet).

In some embodiments, the network 150 can be implemented within a cloudcomputing environment, or using one or more cloud computing services.Consistent with various embodiments, a cloud computing environment mayinclude a network-based, distributed data processing system thatprovides one or more cloud computing services. Further, a cloudcomputing environment may include many computers (e.g., hundreds orthousands of computers or more) disposed within one or more data centersand configured to share resources over the network 150.

In some embodiments, the remote device 102 may enable users to submit(or may submit automatically with or without user input) electronicdocuments (e.g., web pages) containing product reviews to the hostdevices 112 in order to have the product reviews ingested and analyzedfor sentiment (e.g., by natural language processing system 122). Forexample, the remote device 102 may include product review submissionmodule 110 and a user interface (UI). The product review submissionmodule 110 may be in the form of a web browser or any other suitablesoftware module, and the UI may be any type of interface (e.g., commandline prompts, menu screens, graphical user interfaces). The UI may allowa user to interact with the remote device 102 to submit, using theproduct review submission module 110, one or more web pages containingproduct reviews about various products to the host device 112. In someembodiments, the product review submission module 110 may incorporate aweb crawler or other software that allows the module to search for andautomatically identify product reviews for submission to the host device112. In some embodiments, product reviews for different products of thesame type may be submitted together in a single group.

In some embodiments, the product reviews being submitted via the productreview submission module 110 may all belong to (or may have all beencreated on a website that is owned by) the same entity that issubmitting them for analysis. This may occur, for example, when a retailwebsite submits customer product reviews that were provided directly tothe retail website by customers who shopped there. In some otherembodiments, the entity submitting the product reviews may be differentfrom the entity that originally received (e.g., collected) the productreviews from consumers. This may occur, for example, when a retailwebsite obtains product reviews from a third party (e.g., a consumersurvey company), for free or for a fee, and then submits these reviewsfor analysis.

In some embodiments, the remote device 102 may further include a ranknotification receiver module 111. This module may be configured toreceive notifications, from the host device 112, of the relative ranksof various product features common to a group of products. In someembodiments, these relative ranks may then be used by the remote device102 to aid prospective purchasers in determining which product featuresare more important to consider when selecting among a group of competingproducts. For example, these rankings may incorporated (by either theremote device 102 or the host device 112) into web pages that allowconsumers to use these received rankings for sorting through productsfor purchase.

In some embodiments, the host device 112 may include a natural languageprocessing system 122. The natural language processing system 122 mayinclude a natural language processor 124, a rank notifier 126, and asentiment ranker module 130. The natural language processor 124 mayinclude numerous subcomponents, such as a tokenizer, a part-of-speech(POS) tagger, a semantic relationship identifier, and a syntacticrelationship identifier. An example natural language processor isdiscussed in more detail in reference to FIG. 2.

In some embodiments, the sentiment ranker module 130 may be configuredto rank product features based on an analysis of the sentimentassociated with ingested and annotated product reviews. In addition, therank notifier 126 may be connected to the sentiment ranker module 130and may serve to notify a user at the remote system 102 (e.g., via therank notification receiver module 111) of the relative ranks of productfeatures.

In some embodiments, the natural language processing system 122 mayfurther include a search application (not shown). The search applicationmay be implemented using a conventional or other search engine, and maybe distributed across multiple computer systems. The search applicationmay be configured to search one or more databases or other computersystems for product reviews that are related to a target group ofproducts. For example, the search application may be configured tosearch a corpus of information related to product reviews previouslysubmitted by the product review submission module 110 in order toidentify additional relevant product reviews.

While FIG. 1 illustrates a computing environment 100 with a single hostdevice 112 and a single remote device 102, suitable computingenvironments for implementing embodiments of this disclosure may includeany number of remote devices and host devices. The various modules,systems, and components illustrated in FIG. 1 may exist, if at all,across a plurality of host devices and remote devices. For example, someembodiments may include two host devices. The two host devices may becommunicatively coupled using any suitable communications connection(e.g., using a WAN, a LAN, a wired connection, an intranet, or theInternet). The first host device may include a natural languageprocessing system configured to ingest and annotate product reviews, andthe second host device may include a software module configured tocompare and rank product features based on the ingested product reviews.

It is noted that FIG. 1 is intended to depict the representative majorcomponents of an exemplary computing environment 100. In someembodiments, however, individual components may have greater or lessercomplexity than as represented in FIG. 1, components other than or inaddition to those shown in FIG. 1 may be present, and the number, type,and configuration of such components may vary.

Referring now to FIG. 2, shown is a block diagram of an exemplary systemarchitecture 200, including a natural language processing system 212,configured to use product reviews to rank product features, inaccordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. In someembodiments, a remote device (such as remote device 102 of FIG. 1) maysubmit electronic documents or webpages (containing product reviews tobe analyzed) to the natural language processing system 212 which may behoused on a host device (such as host device 112 of FIG. 1). Such aremote device may include a client application 208, which may itselfinvolve one or more entities operable to generate or modify informationin the webpages that are then dispatched to a natural languageprocessing system 212 via a network 215.

Consistent with various embodiments, the natural language processingsystem 212 may respond to electronic document submissions sent by theclient application 208. Specifically, the natural language processingsystem 212 may analyze a received product reviews to aid in the analysisof the relative importance of product features for consumerconsideration. In some embodiments, the natural language processingsystem 212 may include a natural language processor 214, data sources228, a rank notifier 226, and a sentiment ranker module 230.

The natural language processor 214 may be a computer module thatanalyzes the received product reviews and other electronic documents.The natural language processor 214 may perform various methods andtechniques for analyzing electronic documents (e.g., syntactic analysis,semantic analysis, etc.). The natural language processor 214 may beconfigured to recognize and analyze any number of natural languages. Insome embodiments, the natural language processor 214 may parse passagesof the documents. Further, the natural language processor 214 mayinclude various modules to perform analyses of product reviews. Thesemodules may include, but are not limited to, a tokenizer 216, apart-of-speech (POS) tagger 218, a semantic relationship identifier 220,a syntactic relationship identifier 222, and sentiment analyzer 224.

In some embodiments, the tokenizer 216 may be a computer module thatperforms lexical analysis. The tokenizer 216 may convert a sequence ofcharacters into a sequence of tokens. A token may be a string ofcharacters included in an electronic document and categorized as ameaningful symbol. Further, in some embodiments, the tokenizer 216 mayidentify word boundaries in an electronic document and break any textpassages within the document into their component text elements, such aswords, multiword tokens, numbers, and punctuation marks. In someembodiments, the tokenizer 216 may receive a string of characters,identify the lexemes in the string, and categorize them into tokens.

Consistent with various embodiments, the POS tagger 218 may be acomputer module that marks up a word in passages to correspond to aparticular part of speech. The POS tagger 218 may read a passage orother text in natural language and assign a part of speech to each wordor other token. The POS tagger 218 may determine the part of speech towhich a word (or other text element) corresponds based on the definitionof the word and the context of the word. The context of a word may bebased on its relationship with adjacent and related words in a phrase,sentence, or paragraph. In some embodiments, the context of a word maybe dependent on one or more previously analyzed electronic documents(e.g., the content of one product review may shed light on the meaningof text elements in another product review, particularly if they arereviews of the same product). Examples of parts of speech that may beassigned to words include, but are not limited to, nouns, verbs,adjectives, adverbs, and the like. Examples of other part of speechcategories that POS tagger 218 may assign include, but are not limitedto, comparative or superlative adverbs, wh-adverbs, conjunctions,determiners, negative particles, possessive markers, prepositions,wh-pronouns, and the like. In some embodiments, the POS tagger 218 maytag or otherwise annotate tokens of a passage with part of speechcategories. In some embodiments, the POS tagger 218 may tag tokens orwords of a passage to be parsed by other components of the naturallanguage processing system 212.

In some embodiments, the semantic relationship identifier 220 may be acomputer module that is configured to identify semantic relationships ofrecognized text elements (e.g., words, phrases) in documents. In someembodiments, the semantic relationship identifier 220 may determinefunctional dependencies between entities and other semanticrelationships.

Consistent with various embodiments, the syntactic relationshipidentifier 222 may be a computer module that is configured to identifysyntactic relationships in a passage composed of tokens. The syntacticrelationship identifier 222 may determine the grammatical structure ofsentences such as, for example, which groups of words are associated asphrases and which word is the subject or object of a verb. The syntacticrelationship identifier 222 may conform to formal grammar.

Consistent with various embodiments, the sentiment analyzer 224 may be acomputer module that is configured to identify and categorize thesentiments associated with tokens of interest. In some embodiments, thesentiment analyzer may be configured to identify, within text passages,and annotate keywords that are preselected as high quality indicators ofsentiment polarity (e.g., indicators of positive sentiment could includebrilliant, excellent, or fantastic). Various tools and algorithms may beused the sentiment analyzer 224 as are known to those skilled in the art(e.g., Naïve Bayes lexical model).

In some embodiments, the natural language processor 214 may be acomputer module that may parse a document and generate correspondingdata structures for one or more portions of the document. For example,in response to receiving a set of product reviews from a website thatincludes a collection of consumer product reviews at the naturallanguage processing system 212, the natural language processor 214 mayoutput parsed text elements from the product reviews as data structures.In some embodiments, a parsed text element may be represented in theform of a parse tree or other graph structure. To generate the parsedtext element, the natural language processor 214 may trigger computermodules 216-224.

In some embodiments, the output of the natural language processor 214may be stored as an information corpus 229 in one or more data sources228. In some embodiments, data sources 228 may include data warehouses,information corpora, data models, and document repositories. Theinformation corpus 229 may enable data storage and retrieval. In someembodiments, the information corpus 229 may be a storage mechanism thathouses a standardized, consistent, clean, and integrated copy of theingested and parsed product reviews. Data stored in the informationcorpus 229 may be structured in a way to specifically address analyticrequirements. For example, the information corpus 229 may store theingested product reviews based on groups of related products (e.g.,products of the same type) in order to make ranking product featureseasier. In some embodiments, the information corpus 229 may be arelational database.

In some embodiments, the natural language processing system 212 mayinclude a sentiment ranker module 230. The sentiment ranker module 230may be a computer module that is configured to generate sentiment scoresfor specific forms of product features based on the analysis ofannotated product reviews. The sentiment ranker module 230 may befurther configured to rank the product features based on these sentimentscores.

The rank notifier 226 may be a computer module that is configured tonotify users of product features rankings determined by the sentimentranker module 230. In some embodiments, the rank notifier 226 maycommunicate with a rank notification receiver module (such as module 111of FIG. 1).

FIG. 3 illustrates a flowchart of an example method 300 for evaluatingproduct features, in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The method 300 may be performed by a computer system (ormore specifically, a processor thereof), such as the host device 112(shown in FIG. 1). In some embodiments, reviews of products of the sametype or class may be analyzed together (and separate from reviews ofother types of products) in an iteration of the method 300. By groupingproducts of the same type together, the computer system may be able toproduce relative feature importance measurements that are less biasedtoward a particular product and more focused on what is important forthat type of product. In some embodiments, the product reviews analyzedtogether may be for a plurality of non-identical, competing products ofthe same type, with multiple reviews for each product. Furthermore, insome embodiments, each product may have a different specific form foreach product feature as compared to the other products.

The method 300 may begin at operation 301, wherein the computer systemmay ingest content of a product review using natural language processingmodules. Natural language processing, as discussed herein, mayincorporate any relevant natural processing techniques including,without limitation, those techniques discussed in reference to modules216-224 in FIG. 2. For example, in embodiments, the natural languageprocessing techniques may include analyzing syntactic and semanticcontent in the product reviews. The natural language processingtechniques may be configured to parse structured data (e.g., tables,graphs) and unstructured data (e.g., textual content containing words,numbers). In certain embodiments, the natural language processingtechniques may be embodied in software tools or other programsconfigured to analyze and identify the semantic and syntactic elementsand relationships present in and between the product reviews. Moreparticularly, the natural language processing techniques can includeparsing the grammatical constituents, parts of speech, context, andother relationships (e.g., modifiers) of the product reviews. Thenatural language processing techniques can be configured to recognizekeywords, contextual information, and metadata tags associated withwords, phrases, or sentences related to concepts (e.g., productfeatures, words implying sentiments, etc.). The syntactic and semanticelements can include information such as word frequency, word meanings,text font, italics, hyperlinks, proper names, noun phrases,parts-of-speech, or the context of surrounding words. Other syntacticand semantic elements are also possible.

After ingesting the content of the product review at operation 301, thecomputer system may, in operation 302, identify, as being referenced inthe product review, a first specific form of a first product feature ofthe product under review. In some embodiments, this may involveidentifying a word or phrase in the product review that was previouslyannotated with a “product feature” tag by a natural language processormodule configured to recognize words that indicate specific forms ofproduct features.

Per operation 303, the computer system may determine whether there is asentiment within the product review that is associated with theidentified first specific form. If not, then the method may proceed tooperation 305. If, however, there is a sentiment associated with thefirst specific form, then, per operation 304, a preliminary sentimentscore for the first product feature may be increased. As used herein, asentiment score may refer to a measure or indicator of the amount ofsentiment that product reviewers associate with a particular productfeature. In some embodiments, a higher sentiment score may indicate (1)that more reviewers have indicated a sentiment associated with one ormore specific forms of that product feature and/or (2) that reviewershave indicated stronger sentiments (e.g., more strongly negative or morestrongly positive sentiments) associated with the one or more specificforms of that product feature. Furthermore, in some embodiments, eachsentiment score may be a measure of relative importance for anassociated product feature as compared to other product features and nota measure of relative importance for one specific form of the associatedproduct feature as compared to other specific forms of the associatedproduct feature.

In some embodiments, the general tone of particular product review or aparticular reviewer may be taken into account by the computer system indetermining how much weight should be given to any particular productreview. For example, if a reviewer (in a particular review or ingeneral) tends to have strong feelings about many or all features, thenthe fact that the reviewer has a strong feeling about a particularspecific form of a product feature may not be weighed as heavily (i.e.,may affect the preliminary product feature score to a lesser extent). Onthe other side, a strong sentiment by another reviewer who tends to bemore neutral in tone may be more significant. For example, a televisionreview that states that “the picture is terrible, the sound is terrible,and the reception is awesome” might be given less weight when evaluatingthe importance of the sound quality product feature than a secondtelevision review that states that “the picture is fine, the sound isterrible, and the reception is fine.” Furthermore, in some embodiments,the general tone of reviewers may be tracked across many product reviewsby, for example, tracking the reviewer's username.

In some embodiments, operations 302 and 303 be performed, at least inpart, by parsing the product reviews to identify subject-predicatepairings. This may involve analyzing parse trees generated by a naturallanguage processor, such as the natural language processor 214 (shown inFIG. 2). The subject and predict in the sentence may be used to identifya specific form of a product feature (subject) and a text elementindicating sentiment about the specific form (predict). For example, asentence in a product review of a smart phone might read “The camera onthis smart phone is terrible.” A natural language processing system mayparse this sentence to identify a subject (“camera on this smart phone”)and a predict (“terrible”). Based on the parsing, the natural languageprocessing system may determine the product feature's specific form(i.e., the particular camera on this smart phone) is associated withstrongly negative sentiment.

Subsequent to operation 304, or subsequent to operation 303 if operation304 is bypassed, the computer system may, per operation 305, determinewhether there are any additional references in the product review tospecific forms for product features. For each additional reference inthe review, operations 302-304 may be repeated as applicable. In somesituations, a single product review may have several references toseveral different specific forms of product features included in asingle product being reviewed.

Once there are no further additional references to specific forms to beanalyzed in the product review, the computer system may, per operation306, determine whether there are any additional product reviews to beanalyzed. For each such additional product review, operations 301-305may be repeated as applicable. In some embodiments, several productreviews may be processed by the computer system contemporaneously, forexample, when an entire retail website containing many product reviewsis selected for analysis.

Once all of the applicable product reviews have been analyzed, thecomputer system may, per operation 307, generate a final sentiment scorefor each product feature based on the preliminary sentiment scores thatwere updated in one or more iterations of operation 304. In someembodiments, the sentiment score for each product feature may bedependent upon a relative proportion of product reviews that incorporatea sentiment associated with a specific form for that particular productfeature. For example, a first product feature that has one or morespecific forms opined about in fifty percent of analyzed product reviewsmay have a higher sentiment score that a second product feature that hasone or more specific forms opined about in only twenty percent of theanalyzed product reviews.

Per operation 308, the computer system may compare the final sentimentscores to each other. Per operation 309 and based on the comparison, thecomputer system may rank the product features. In some embodiments, theranking of the product features may be done by sorting the productfeatures into different categories depending on sentiment score (e.g.,product features with high sentiment scores, product features withmiddling sentiment scores, and product features with low sentimentscores). In some embodiments, the ranking of product features may bedone by providing the product features and the sentiment scores togetherin a group so that a reviewer may easily determine, by reviewing thesentiment scores, which product features rank higher than others.

Upon completion of the method 300, the product feature ranking may beused for a variety of purposes to inform consumer purchasing decisions.For example, the rankings may be used to aid prospective purchasers indetermining which product features are more important to consider whenselecting among a plurality of products. This may include causing theranking of the product features to be published to a publicly availableforum, such as a website hosted by the remote device 102 of FIG. 1. Insome embodiments, these product feature rankings may be used in rankingproducts, for example, on retail websites. In some embodiments, inaddition to the rankings themselves, the evidence (e.g., annotatedproduct reviews) that the computer system used determine and support therankings may also be provided. As provided, this evidence may allow theconsumers to see specific details that explain why certain features wereranked higher than other features.

While example embodiments of the method 300 are described herein, manyadditional embodiments are also contemplated. For example, in someembodiments, additional operations may be performed by the computersystem in order to identify (e.g., define) product features to beranked. This may be necessary in situations where there is not a cleardelineation between product features. In some embodiments, the computersystem may determine the categories of product features by obtaining alist of product features to use from a system administrator or subjectmatter expert (e.g., a vacuum cleaner expert might provide a list of sixproduct features that generally applicable to vacuum cleaners). In otherembodiments, the computer system may determine the categories of productfeatures only after analyzing a number product reviews about a type ofproduct. In delineating among product features, the computer system mayuse techniques such as clustering, fuzzy logic, and concept matching todefine product feature groupings.

Furthermore, in some additional embodiments of the method 300, theproportion of times that one or more specific forms for a productfeature is mentioned in a product review may increase the sentimentscore for that product feature even when there is no sentiment (or onlyneutral sentiment) associated with the specific form in the productreview. For example, consider a phrase taken from an example productreview: “The fact that the hotel room had a Jacuzzi tub was okay.” Inthis example, the hotel room may be considered the product, bathingfacilities may be considered the product feature, and the Jacuzzi tubmay be considered the specific form of the product feature. Here, eventhough the sentiment about the specific form may be considered neutral(because the Jacuzzi tub is said to be okay), the fact that the Jacuzzitub was even mentioned in the product review may cause the sentimentscore for the product feature (bathing facilities) to be increased. Thisincrease, however, may be less than it would be if there was strongersentiment associated with the Jacuzzi tub.

FIG. 4 illustrates a diagram including two example web pages 410, 420containing product reviews that may utilized in methods describedherein, in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Inthis example scenario, the first web page 410 is used by a first company(ABC Knives) that sells a variety of kitchen knives. As shown, the firstweb page 410 includes two consumer product reviews 411, 412 for the CutMaster chef's knife. The second web page 420 is used by a second company(Chop Shop) that sells a competing chef's knife, called the Slicer Brandchef's knife. The second web page 420 includes a consumer product review421 for the Slicer Brand knife.

As described herein, the product reviews 411, 412, and 421 may beanalyzed in order to evaluate what product features a consumer shouldconsider when buying a chef's knife. The evaluation may begin with aremote device (such as remote device 102 of FIG. 1) identifying the twoweb pages 410, 420 on a search for product reviews about kitchen knives.The remote device may submit the web pages 410, 420 (e.g., via a productreview submission module 110 of FIG. 1) to a host device (such as hostdevice 112 of FIG. 1).

Upon receiving the web pages 410, 420, the host device may perform oneor more operations of the method 300 described in reference to FIG. 3.Specifically, the host device may (e.g., per operation 301 of FIG. 3)use a modules of a natural language processor (e.g., natural languageprocessor 214 of FIG. 2) to ingest and annotate the first product review411. Then, by analyzing the ingested first product review 411, the hostdevice may determine (e.g., per operation 302 of FIG. 3) that a firstspecific form, fifteen centimeters, for a first product feature, bladelength, is referenced in the first review 411. The host device maydetermine (e.g., per operation 303 of FIG. 3) that there is a sentimentassociated with the fifteen centimeter blade length. Specifically, thehost device may make this determination based on identifying theassociation between the mention of the blade length (the subject of thesentence) and the use of the word “inadequate” (the predict of thesentence and a known indicator of negative sentiment) within the firstreview 411. Based on the sentiment discovered in the first review 411,the host device may increase a preliminary sentiment score for the bladelength product feature (e.g., per operation 304 of FIG. 3) from zeropoints to one point.

Continuing the example scenario, upon determining (e.g., per operation305 of FIG. 3) that there are no additional references to productfeatures in the first review 411, the host device may identify andingest (e.g., per operations 306 and 301 of FIG. 3) the second productreview 412. The host device may determine (e.g., per operation 302 ofFIG. 3) that a first specific form, stainless steel, for a secondproduct feature, blade material, is referenced in the second review 412.The host device may also determine (e.g., per operation 303 of FIG. 3)that there is a sentiment associated with the stainless steel bladematerial, as indicated by the word “great.” Based on thesedeterminations about the second review 412, the host device may increasea preliminary sentiment score for the blade material product feature(e.g., per operation 304 of FIG. 3) from zero points to one point.

Further continuing the example scenario, upon determining (e.g., peroperation 305 of FIG. 3) that there are no additional references toproduct features in the second review 412, the host device may identifyand ingest (e.g., per operations 306 and 301 of FIG. 3) the thirdproduct review 421. The host device may determine (e.g., per operation302 of FIG. 3) that a second specific form, carbon fiber (as opposed tostainless steel for the Cut Master chef's knife), for the blade lengthproduct feature is referenced in the third review 421. The host devicemay also determine (e.g., per operation 303 of FIG. 3) that there is,however, no sentiment associated with the carbon fiber blade material,because the word “fine” is neutral. Accordingly, the host device may notre-increase the preliminary sentiment score for blade material, whichmay remain at a score of one point.

Next, the host device may identify (e.g., per operations 305 and 302 ofFIG. 3) a second reference to a product feature in the third review 421.Specifically, the host device may determine that a second specific form,twenty-five centimeters, for the blade length product feature is alsoreferenced in the third review 421. The host device may also determine(e.g., per operation 303 of FIG. 3) that there is a sentiment associatedwith the twenty-five centimeter embodiment of the blade length productfeature, as indicated by the phrase “totally unwieldy.” Based on thesedeterminations about the third review 421, the host device may increasethe preliminary sentiment score for the blade length product feature(e.g., per operation 304 of FIG. 3) from one point to two points.

Continuing the example scenario further, the host device may determine(e.g., per operations 305 and 306) that there are no additional productfeatures referenced in the third review 421 and that there are noadditional product reviews to be ingested. Accordingly, the host devicemay generate (e.g., per operation 307 of FIG. 3) a final sentiment scorefor all of the product features (of chef's knives) that have beenreviewed. Specifically, a final sentiment score of one point may begenerated for the blade material product feature and a final sentimentscore of two points may be generated for the blade length productfeature. The host device may compare the final sentiment scores (e.g.,per operation 308 of FIG. 3) and rank, based on the comparison, theblade length product feature above the blade material product feature(e.g., per operation 309 of FIG. 3).

In some embodiments, this set of chef's knife product feature rankingsmay be used to help consumers determine which product features are moreimportant to consider when they are shopping for a chef's knife.Further, in some embodiments, these knife rankings may not indicate (oreven be intended to indicate), at least directly, whether one particularchef's knife is better than other. More specifically, these rankings maybe intended to indicate that blade length (because of its higher score)is more important to consider that blade material when buying a chef'sknife, while, on the other side, these rankings may not be intended toindicate that a fifteen centimeter blade is better than a twenty-fivecentimeter blade, or vice versa.

After the chef's knife rankings are generated, they may be transmittedfrom the host device to a remote device (e.g., via the rank notifier 126and rank notification receiver module 111 of FIG. 1). The remote devicemay then use these rankings, in one form or another, to inform consumerpurchasing decisions about chef's knives.

It is noted that the three reviews 411, 412, and 421 described inreference to FIG. 4 all explicitly state both the product features andspecific forms at issue in the review. This is done for the sake ofclarity only and may not apply to all embodiments. In some embodiments,one or both of the product feature or the specific form (and potentiallyeven the product itself) may only be implied by the product review orthe context in which it is displayed or may be left unexpressedaltogether. For example, a product review may state the product featureonly, leaving the specific form undescribed (e.g., “the hotel room pricewas too high” or “the vehicle's engine's size was too small”). Foranother example, a product review may state the specific form only andleave the product feature implicit (e.g., “$250 is too much to pay for ahotel room” or “a 1.4 liter engine is too small”). In either situation,a computer system, according to some embodiments, may be able to eitherinfer the product feature or the specific form from the context of thereview (e.g., where the review was located on a web page, the statementsfound in related reviews, etc.). Furthermore, in some embodiments, thecomputer system may be able to evaluate a product review without everdetermining the specific form of the product feature being reviewed. Forexample, if a review states about a golf club that “the club length istoo short”, then the computer system may be able to infer a negativesentiment about the specific form of the club length embodied in thatparticular club, without ever learning the actual value (e.g., clublength in centimeters) of that specific form.

FIG. 5 illustrates a diagram including an example auction web page 500utilizing product feature rankings to aid consumer purchasing decisions,in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. In thisexample, the web page 500 is for an online retail company (AuctionWorld) that sells laptop computers. As shown the web page 500 includeslisted rankings 501, drop down menu 502, and product display portion503.

The listed rankings 501 display a ranking of laptop features generated,for example, by a computer system performing operations of the method300 of FIG. 3. In some embodiments, the listed rankings 501 may havebeen generated by the same entity that owns the web page. In otherembodiments, the listed rankings 501 may have been generated by a thirdparty that specializes in obtaining and analyzing product reviews fromnumerous sources for sentiment. In this example, according to the listedrankings, the most import feature for prospective laptop purchasers toconsider is RAM capacity and the least important feature (of those thatare ranked) is the number of USB ports in the laptop.

As shown, the example drop down menu 502 allows visitors to the web page500 to select how they want the laptops to be sorted in the productdisplay portion 503. In this instance, the visitor has selected to sort(e.g., filter) the products by the quality score of the specific form ofthe top-ranked feature (i.e., RAM capacity, in this instance). In someembodiments, a quality score for a specific form may be generated basedon the quantity or quality of the product feature as embodied in theparticular product being scored. For example, a laptop with 100 GB harddrive may have a higher quality score for the hard disk size productfeature than a competing laptop with only a 50 GB hard drive.

In some embodiments, quality scores may be generated based on the sameproduct reviews that are used to generate product feature rankings. Thismay include, for example, a computer system analyzing the sentimentassociated with a specific form of a product feature not only fordetermining whether to increase the preliminary sentiment score for theproduct feature (as is described in operations 303 and 304 of FIG. 3),but also for the purpose of determining whether to increase or decreasea preliminary quality score for the specific form (e.g., with positivesentiment causing the preliminary quality score to increase and negativesentiment causing the preliminary quality score to decrease). In otherembodiments, quality scores may be generated based on expert opinionsabout the product of interest.

As shown, the product display portion 503 shows three laptops that areranked according to their quality scores 504, 505, and 506 for the RAMcapacity product feature. Specifically, the Rebound Model 1000 Laptophas a RAM capacity quality score of 9.5 (highest), the Radar Model LXLaptop has a RAM capacity quality score of 8.7, and the Acme Model A95Laptop has a RAM capacity score of 7.2 (lowest). In this example, thevisitor may use these rankings in determining which of the three laptopsshould be purchased.

As shown, the example auction web page 500 also includes four hyperlinks507, 508, 509, and 510. Of these, hyperlinks 507-509 are labeled as“Relevant Reviews” and may be used to provide visitors to the page 500with access to the underlying evidence that a computer system used toderive the quality scores 504-506 for each of the three displayedproducts. For example, hyperlink 507 may provide a link to a separatewindow that is populated with forty consumer product reviews wherein thereviewer's all wrote very positively about the RAM capacity of theRebound Model 1000 Laptop, which caused its quality score 504 to behigh. For another example, hyperlink 509 may provide a link to aseparate webpage that includes an expert opinion giving only a middlingreview to the RAM capacity of the Acme Model A95 Laptop, which causedits quality score 506 to be middling.

The fourth hyperlink 510 on the web page 500 may be used to providevisitors with access to the underlying evidence that a computer system(e.g., the computer system performing operations of the method 300 ofFIG. 3) used to derive the listed rankings 501. For example, hyperlink510 may provide a link to a database that includes laptop productreviews sorted by sentiment about specific forms of product featuresreferenced in each review. A quick glance through the database by thevisitor may reveal that there are several hundred laptop product reviewsthat include sentiment about specific forms of RAM capacity but only acouple product reviews that include sentiment about specific forms ofthe number of USB ports.

While in the depicted example, only the quality scores of the top-rankedfeature are used to rank the products, other product ranking schemesemploying other filter criteria are also possible. For example, in someembodiments, the quality scores for all of the ranked product featuresmay be used as the criteria for filtering the products, with thehigher-ranked product features counting for more relative weight. Forexample, in some embodiments, a visitor may adjust the preferences onthe web page to indicate that only products having a minimum level ofquality (e.g., quality score) for a particular product feature ranked asimportant should be displayed to the visitor.

In some embodiments, a potential purchaser on a website may be ableadjust the product filter criteria in other ways as well. For example,an option may be included in a web page to allow the potential purchaserto select which product features he thinks are important and then therest of the product features may be re-ranked accordingly. This may beuseful in situations where product feature rankings in the abstract aredifferent than the corresponding rankings where a given product featureis predetermined (e.g., based on user selection) as important topurchaser consideration. For example, in one scenario product feature Amay normally be relatively unimportant, but given that a particularpurchaser has indicated that product feature B is important to him (orhas been detected by a computer system as being biased towards productsthat have high quality specific forms of product feature B), theobjective relative importance of product feature A may increasesubstantially for that particular purchaser's purposes. In someembodiments, the potential purchaser may be notified of change inimportance (e.g., by a banner on the website saying “people who thoughtthat product feature B was important also thought that product feature Awas important”). In some embodiments, the determination of which productfeatures are associated with other product features may be done by acomputer system that does intra-review analysis on individual productreviews to determine which features are often correlated together byindividual reviewers (e.g., the computer system may determine that fiftypercent of product reviewers who had strong sentiment about the specificform of product feature B also had strong sentiment about the specificform of product feature A).

As discussed in more detail herein, it is contemplated that some or allof the operations of some of the embodiments of methods described hereinmay be performed in alternative orders or may not be performed at all;furthermore, multiple operations may occur at the same time or as aninternal part of a larger process.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product. The computer program product may include a computerreadable storage medium (or media) having computer readable programinstructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of thepresent invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers, and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C++ or the like, andconventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particularembodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the variousembodiments. As used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the” areintended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearlyindicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms“includes” and/or “including,” when used in this specification, specifythe presence of the stated features, integers, steps, operations,elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence oraddition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations,elements, components, and/or groups thereof. In the foregoing detaileddescription of exemplary embodiments of the various embodiments,reference was made to the accompanying drawings (where like numbersrepresent like elements), which form a part hereof, and in which isshown by way of illustration specific exemplary embodiments in which thevarious embodiments may be practiced. These embodiments were describedin sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice theembodiments, but other embodiments may be used and logical, mechanical,electrical, and other changes may be made without departing from thescope of the various embodiments. In the foregoing description, numerousspecific details were set forth to provide a thorough understanding thevarious embodiments. But, the various embodiments may be practicedwithout these specific details. In other instances, well-known circuits,structures, and techniques have not been shown in detail in order not toobscure embodiments.

Different instances of the word “embodiment” as used within thisspecification do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment, but theymay. Any data and data structures illustrated or described herein areexamples only, and in other embodiments, different amounts of data,types of data, fields, numbers and types of fields, field names, numbersand types of rows, records, entries, or organizations of data may beused. In addition, any data may be combined with logic, so that aseparate data structure may not be necessary. The previous detaileddescription is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense.

The descriptions of the various embodiments of the present disclosurehave been presented for purposes of illustration, but are not intendedto be exhaustive or limited to the embodiments disclosed. Manymodifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skillin the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the describedembodiments. The terminology used herein was chosen to best explain theprinciples of the embodiments, the practical application or technicalimprovement over technologies found in the marketplace, or to enableothers of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodimentsdisclosed herein.

Although the present invention has been described in terms of specificembodiments, it is anticipated that alterations and modification thereofwill become apparent to the skilled in the art. Therefore, it isintended that the following claims be interpreted as covering all suchalterations and modifications as fall within the true spirit and scopeof the invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method for evaluating aplurality of product features, the method comprising: ingesting, by aprocessor using natural language processing, product reviews for aplurality of products, wherein each product embodies a specific form foreach of the plurality of product features; analyzing, by the processor,the ingested product reviews for sentiments associated with the specificforms; generating, based on the analyzing and by the processor, asentiment score for each product feature; and ranking, based on thesentiment scores and by the processor, the plurality of productfeatures.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the ranking indicates arelative importance of each of the plurality of product features toprospective purchaser consideration.
 3. The method of claim 1, whereinthe ingesting, by the processor using natural language processing, theproduct reviews comprises: converting, by a tokenizer running on theprocessor, sequences of characters within the product reviews intosequences of tokens by identifying word boundaries in the productreviews; determining, by a part-of-speech tagger running on theprocessor, a part of speech for each token and marking each token withits part of speech; identifying, by syntactic relationship identifierrunning on the processor, syntactic relationships amongst the tokens;and generating, by the processor and based on the identified syntacticrelationships, parse trees for the product reviews.
 4. The method ofclaim 3, wherein the analyzing the ingested product reviews for thesentiments associated with the specific forms comprises: analyzing, bythe processor, the generated parse trees to identify associationsbetween subject specific forms and predicate sentiments.
 5. The methodof claim 1, wherein the plurality of products are non-identical,competing products, wherein the product reviews include a plurality ofproduct reviews for each non-identical, competing product, and whereinthe sentiments associated with the specific forms are analyzed forrelative extremity of polarity.
 6. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: aiding prospective purchasers in determining which of theproduct features are more important to consider when selecting among theplurality of products by causing the ranking of the product features tobe published to a publicly available forum.
 7. The method of claim 1,wherein the analyzing the ingested product reviews comprises:identifying, in an ingested product review for a first product embodyinga first specific form for a first product feature, a relatively strongpositive sentiment associated with the first specific form; andidentifying, in an ingested product review for a second productembodying a second specific form for the first product feature, arelatively strong negative sentiment associated with the second specificform, wherein the relatively strong positive sentiment and therelatively strong negative sentiment both cause a sentiment score forthe first product feature to be higher.
 8. The method of claim 1,wherein each sentiment score is a measure of relative importance for anassociated product feature as compared to other product features and nota measure of relative importance for one specific form of the associatedproduct feature as compared to other specific forms of the associatedproduct feature.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the sentiment scorefor each product feature is dependent upon a relative proportion of theproduct reviews that incorporate a sentiment associated with a specificform for that product feature.
 10. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: identifying a highest-ranking product feature from theranked plurality of product features; generating a quality score foreach product based on a specific form of the highest-ranking productfeature embodied within that product; ranking, based on quality score,the plurality of products; and publishing each quality score inassociation with evidence relied upon to generate the quality score. 11.The method of claim 1, wherein the ingesting the product reviewscomprises ingesting a first product review for a first product, thefirst product including a first specific form for a first productfeature and a second specific form for a second product feature, whereinthe ingesting the product reviews further comprises ingesting a secondproduct review for a second product, the second product including athird specific form for the first product feature and a fourth specificform for the second product feature, wherein the analyzing the ingestedproduct reviews comprises determining that the first product review hasa first polarity of sentiment associated with the first specific formand a second polarity of sentiment associated with the second specificform, wherein the analyzing the ingested product reviews furthercomprises determining that the second product review has a thirdpolarity of sentiment associated with the third specific form and afourth polarity of sentiment associated with the fourth specific form,wherein the generating the sentiment score for each product featurecomprises generating a first sentiment score for the first productfeature based on the first polarity of sentiment and the third polarityof sentiment, wherein the generating the sentiment score for eachproduct feature further comprises generating a second sentiment scorefor the second product feature based on the second polarity of sentimentand the fourth polarity of sentiment, and wherein the ranking theplurality of product features comprises ranking, based at least in parton the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score, the firstproduct feature above the second product feature.
 12. A system forevaluating a plurality of product features, the system comprising: amemory; a processor in communication with the memory, the processorconfigured to perform a method comprising: ingesting, using naturallanguage processing, product reviews for a plurality of products,wherein each product embodies a specific form for each of the pluralityof product features; analyzing the ingested product reviews forsentiments associated with the specific forms; generating, based on theanalyzing, a sentiment score for each product feature; and ranking,based on the sentiment scores, the plurality of product features. 13.The system of claim 12, wherein the method further comprises: aidingprospective purchasers in determining which of the product features aremore important to consider when selecting among the plurality ofproducts by causing the ranking of the product features to be publishedto a publicly available forum.
 14. The system of claim 12, wherein theanalyzing the ingested product reviews comprises: identifying, in aningested product review for a first product embodying a first specificform for a first product feature, a relatively strong positive sentimentassociated with the first specific form; and identifying, in an ingestedproduct review for a second product embodying a second specific form forthe first product feature, a relatively strong negative sentimentassociated with the second specific form, wherein the relatively strongpositive sentiment and the relatively strong negative sentiment bothcause a sentiment score for the first product feature to be higher. 15.The system of claim 12, wherein each sentiment score is a measure ofrelative importance for an associated product feature as compared toother product features and not a measure of relative importance for onespecific form of the associated product feature as compared to otherspecific forms of the associated product feature.
 16. The system ofclaim 12, wherein the method further comprises: identifying ahighest-ranking product feature from the ranked plurality of productfeatures; generating a quality score for each product based on aspecific form of the highest-ranking product feature embodied withinthat product; ranking, based on quality score, the plurality ofproducts; and publishing each quality score in association with evidencerelied upon to generate the quality score.
 17. The system of claim 12,wherein the ingesting the product reviews comprises ingesting a firstproduct review for a first product, the first product including a firstspecific form for a first product feature and a second specific form fora second product feature, wherein the ingesting the product reviewsfurther comprises ingesting a second product review for a secondproduct, the second product including a third specific form for thefirst product feature and a fourth specific form for the second productfeature, wherein the analyzing the ingested product reviews comprisesdetermining that the first product review has a first polarity ofsentiment associated with the first specific form and a second polarityof sentiment associated with the second specific form, wherein theanalyzing the ingested product reviews further comprises determiningthat the second product review has a third polarity of sentimentassociated with the third specific form and a fourth polarity ofsentiment associated with the fourth specific form, wherein thegenerating the sentiment score for each product feature comprisesgenerating a first sentiment score for the first product feature basedon the first polarity of sentiment and the third polarity of sentiment,wherein the generating the sentiment score for each product featurefurther comprises generating a second sentiment score for the secondproduct feature based on the second polarity of sentiment and the fourthpolarity of sentiment, and wherein the ranking the plurality of productfeatures comprises ranking, based at least in part on the firstsentiment score and the second sentiment score, the first productfeature above the second product feature.
 18. A computer program productfor evaluating a plurality of product features, the computer programproduct comprising a computer readable storage medium having programinstructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable bya processor to cause the processor to perform a method comprising:ingesting, using natural language processing, product reviews for aplurality of products, wherein each product embodies a specific form foreach of the plurality of product features; analyzing the ingestedproduct reviews for sentiments associated with the specific forms;generating, based on the analyzing, a sentiment score for each productfeature; and ranking, based on the sentiment scores, the plurality ofproduct features.
 19. The computer program product of claim 18, whereinthe analyzing the ingested product reviews comprises: identifying, in aningested product review for a first product embodying a first specificform for a first product feature, a relatively strong positive sentimentassociated with the first specific form; and identifying, in an ingestedproduct review for a second product embodying a second specific form forthe first product feature, a relatively strong negative sentimentassociated with the second specific form, wherein the relatively strongpositive sentiment and the relatively strong negative sentiment bothcause a sentiment score for the first product feature to be higher. 20.The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the ingesting theproduct reviews comprises ingesting a first product review for a firstproduct, the first product including a first specific form for a firstproduct feature and a second specific form for a second product feature,wherein the ingesting the product reviews further comprises ingesting asecond product review for a second product, the second product includinga third specific form for the first product feature and a fourthspecific form for the second product feature, wherein the analyzing theingested product reviews comprises determining that the first productreview has a first polarity of sentiment associated with the firstspecific form and a second polarity of sentiment associated with thesecond specific form, wherein the analyzing the ingested product reviewsfurther comprises determining that the second product review has a thirdpolarity of sentiment associated with the third specific form and afourth polarity of sentiment associated with the fourth specific form,wherein the generating the sentiment score for each product featurecomprises generating a first sentiment score for the first productfeature based on the first polarity of sentiment and the third polarityof sentiment, wherein the generating the sentiment score for eachproduct feature further comprises generating a second sentiment scorefor the second product feature based on the second polarity of sentimentand the fourth polarity of sentiment, and wherein the ranking theplurality of product features comprises ranking, based at least in parton the first sentiment score and the second sentiment score, the firstproduct feature above the second product feature.